Turkey on Saturday sent more tanks into the northern Syrian village of al-Rai to fight Islamic State (IS) extremists, opening a new front after its intervention last month against the group, state media reported.
The tanks crossed into the village from the Turkish province of Kilis to provide military support to Syrian opposition fighters as part of Turkey’s “Euphrates Shield,” state-run Anadolu news agency said.
At least 20 tanks, five armored personnel carriers, trucks and other armored vehicles crossed the border after noon, Dogan news agency said.
Turkish Firtina howitzers fired on IS targets as the contingent advanced, Dogan said.
Euphrates Shield is Ankara’s most ambitious operation during the five-and-a-half-year Syria conflict, backed by the tanks as well as war planes and special forces providing support to rebels.
The goal is to remove IS from its border and to halt the westward advance of the Kurdish People’s Protection Militia (YPG).
US President Barack Obama’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter IS Brett McGurk said on Twitter US forces hit extremist targets overnight on Friday with a “newly deployed” mobile rocket system close to the Turkish border with Syria.
The US embassy in Ankara said on the social media Web site it was the “latest step in US-Turkey cooperation in the fight against [IS].”
Meanwhile, Turkish war planes destroyed two IS targets in Wuguf in southern al-Rai between 1pm and 1:24pm, the Turkish Chief of Staff said, quoted by NTV television.
The statement also said two villages were captured by rebels on Saturday in the al-Rai region.
In the last few months, al-Rai has repeatedly changed hands between rebels and the IS.
Ahmed Othman, a commander in pro-Turkey rebel group Sultan Murad, said in Beirut that his group is “working on two fronts in al-Rai, south and east, in order to advance towards the villages recently liberated from IS west of Jarabulus.”
Othman said it was the first phase of their plans. “We want to clear the border area between al-Rai and Jarabulus from the IS, before advancing south towards al-Bab [the last IS bastion in Aleppo] and Manbij,” which is controlled by pro-Kurdish forces.
After the Kurds’ success in Manbij, they said they wanted to advance and link their other two “cantons” in northern Syria, Kobane and Afrin.
However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey would not allow the group to create a “terror corridor.”
Ankara sees the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG as terror groups acting as the Syrian branch of separatist rebels in Turkey’s restive southeast.
Militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were blamed on Saturday for the deaths of 20 Turkish soldiers and a village guardsman after three separate clashes and an attack in a violent 48 hours in the country’s east and southeast.
The guard killed was part of a group of local residents who cooperate with Turkish security forces against the PKK, listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
Meanwhile, in Cologne, up to 30,000 people took part in a protest against the Turkish offensive in Syria, German news agency DPA reported, while calling for the PKK leader and one of its founders Abdullah Ocalan to be released from jail.
The intervention into Syria last month caused another complication in what was already a tangled five-year civil war, with Ankara and Washington supporting different proxy groups seeking to retake territory from the IS.
The US has provided training and equipment to the YPG, much to Ankara’s chagrin.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in